We Are the Rebels Read Online Free PDF Page B

her family. Wrote
a detailed memoir of early life in Ballarat, including Eureka.
    ARCHIVE Memoir, SLV MS 1010211
    Genteel Englishwoman Martha Clendinning, travelling with her doctor husband and
young daughter, had a calamitous ending to her voyage, when the St George foundered
on rocks just off Queen-scliff. The Clendinnings, in their first-class berth, got
off lightly, losing only their brand new digging tools. But all the lower-class
passengers in steerage lost their entire belongings. These poor buggers limped ashore
with nothing.
    It was grief and fear, not elation, that accompanied many passengers as they docked
at their new lives.

(NOT SO MARVELLOUS) MELBOURNE
    Gold-rush Melbourne—gateway to the diggings—was a city reeling. In 1852, the year
following the first gold discoveries, the city was like a ghost town.
    Crews (and even captains) abandoned their ships in the harbour, leaving nothing more
than a forest of masts , as Alexander Dick described the port of Melbourne. Construction
sites were frozen in time: buildings had been started but there were no workers to
finish them.
    The police force was gutted, schools closed, the public service staggered along on
a skeleton staff. And husbands (notoriously) deserted their wives. Some women expected
their men to reappear with a pocketful of gold; others knew they were gone for good.
    A year later, however, many of the original fugitives had returned. Some had made
their pile; some had realised they could make a fortune a lot more easily selling
goods and services to gold diggers than digging for gold themselves.
    Carpenters, stonemasons and other artisans found their skills were suddenly in demand.
Shady lawyers and dubious doctors, who had come to Australia to dig for wealth, discovered
that their professions paid better—regardless of whether they really were qualified.
A publican’s licence was a sure route to prosperity—liquid gold. You just had to
be adaptable.
    And no one knew the value of adaptability better than women. As Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye
wrote in her advice manual for prospective female immigrants, what was needed in
Victoria, far more than fine garments, letters of introduction and impeccable manners,
was a smiling face, and a firm determination never to look on the shady side of
the picture but to make the very best of every cross, accident or discomfort . Melbourne
was a can-do sort of a place—and it was growing at a ferocious rate.

    Victoria and the goldfields

SETTLING FOR COLLINGWOOD
    The explosion in Melbourne’s growth had far-reaching effects. Many immigrants, particularly
those with families, were disheartened by what they saw when they left the cosy
little floating world of their ship. The search for decent lodgings was the first
challenge. Single young men could bed down in any nook or cranny, but fathers struggled
to find accommodation for their dependants.
    Solomon Belinfante, a Jamaican-born London Jew, had been assured of a room in Melbourne
by one of his brethren. He went ashore with his pregnant 21-year-old wife Ada, their
infant daughter Rebecca and her nursemaid, after a comfortable 78 days at sea under
steam power.
    We had lunch in a miserable place called Sandridge , wrote Belinfante (aged 40) in
his diary, then walked to the omnibus ankle deep in mud…heartily sick of the Cohen
promises to engage lodgings…heartily disgusted with the place . But Ada and Solomon
soon settled in Collingwood, where he became a commercial broker and she got on with
the business of having eleven more children.
    At this stage the suburb of Collingwood had no roads and the stumps of newly felled
gum trees poked out of the ground. A metre-high gum stub protruded right at the entrance
to Martha Clendinning’s new abode. Martha and her daughter were lucky to find a room
to rent in the house of the well known vocalist , Mrs Tester. Martha’s husband Dr
George Clendinning stayed at a pub, sleeping on a billiard table.
    The housing shortage underlay